Acid possibly. OH squeezes his own orange juice every morning so there's a lot of orange peel goes in there. It does rot down into nice garden compost none-the-less though but probably takes a bit longer than it would otherwise. There are plenty of other beasties in there just very few worms.
Singing Gardener (that describes e too!): Orange peel (as you have discovered) takes a long time to decompose. Chop it up a bit?
If the compost's too acidic, you could sprinkle some ground limestone in (putting lime in compost used to be recommended, and that was generally slaked lime (calcium hydroxide) rather than the far more innocuous limestone calcium carbonate)) Beware of quicklime though (calcium oxide) as it reacts violently and very exothermically with water!
Compost is always acidic (the decomposition processes produce a variety of acids (including carbonic of course) generally lumped together as 'humic acid) so if you want it to be otherwise you will need to add lime in some form.
BTW, that stray 'e' in the first set of brackets in my previous post should have had an 'm' in front of it! But you'd worked that one out already.
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Lilian - thanks for that. I'd always put it down to the clay but will have to look into it further
I have the reverse problem, LesleyK. My clay soil is full of worms but there are none in my compost bins and I've no idea why!
Too dry/too wet/ too acid/ too something
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
too bad?
I'll get me coat
Acid possibly. OH squeezes his own orange juice every morning so there's a lot of orange peel goes in there. It does rot down into nice garden compost none-the-less though but probably takes a bit longer than it would otherwise. There are plenty of other beasties in there just very few worms.
Start feeding the birds and some of them will be encouraged to eat the worms too.
Singing Gardener (that describes e too!): Orange peel (as you have discovered) takes a long time to decompose. Chop it up a bit?
If the compost's too acidic, you could sprinkle some ground limestone in (putting lime in compost used to be recommended, and that was generally slaked lime (calcium hydroxide) rather than the far more innocuous limestone calcium carbonate)) Beware of quicklime though (calcium oxide) as it reacts violently and very exothermically with water!
Like the new pic, Dove
Thanks Steve309, I might test the acidity of the finished compost and give that a go.
Compost is always acidic (the decomposition processes produce a variety of acids (including carbonic of course) generally lumped together as 'humic acid) so if you want it to be otherwise you will need to add lime in some form.
BTW, that stray 'e' in the first set of brackets in my previous post should have had an 'm' in front of it! But you'd worked that one out already.